New Ideas for Book Typography

A couple of days ago I publicly “sighed” at a client of mine who doesn’t want me to use italic or bold in a book we are working on. The client is king, so I started to typeset the book solely using Meran light …

I was overwhelmed by the response and hilarious tips my friends started to throw at me in the following hours. Here is the best of:

Indra Oh you are awesome! Thanks for all the elaborate tips! (I especially love the upside-down-idea :)
Alas we settled on Meran already, no serif (not liked either) and I didn’t plan on using the condensed but we’ll see. Up to now I only did the cover and intro with distinction and emphasize by size, color (greyscale) and white space. Luckily it’s a photography book, so not that much text, but I’m already looking forward to the index and imprint.

Arjen van Voorst What about sticking to one-size-fits-all? Try with one typeface, no variations in size, shape or weight. Just play with whitespace…

Jesse Ragan Set the whole thing in all caps, using lowercase for emphasis.

Frank GrießhammerHow did you manage to do that with the 6500-glyph-limit of @fontlaberrors? ;)

Frederik Berlaenufo2fdk simple ;-) Done with a 53 line of sweet python (for the outline rotation and writing the features) from any exiting font.

Indra This is most hilarious irrelevant thread ever, I’ll encourage you as empathically as I can.

Arjen van Voorst ‎Tiffany, I’m so very sorry about that. But I understand that our input is no longer nescessary. There is one suggestion I can’t keep to myself: Forget about spacing: All text in lowercase without spaces should do the trick…

Simon Robertson no suggestions, just i feel your pain. i have clients/co-workers here who have similar feelings. some hate serifs, some love them. etc etc. All the best! and I’d love to see how to resolve it when it done, if that possible??

Dan Reynolds Well, your client is German, right? What about a fine Fraktur as a secondary typeface (Eric Gill recommeded that), or maybe just letterspacing the emphasized text? If it is good enough for the Bundesregierung …

Niels Heidenreich Fraktur would be pretty cool… but I guess they wouldn’t find it funny.

Indra My client is a photographer who has a very clear idea of how his book should look like and is actually quasi designing it himself. I’m trying my best within the restrictions of three columns, no serif, no italic, no bold, no fancy whatsoever. So I guess no Fraktur either. But he never said anything against ALLCAPSTEXT, so …

Chris Lozos Looks like he is an Emil Ruder fan. See his book “Typographie”.

Yay! Invigorated by such awesome tips gehe ich frisch ans Werk and will keep you posted on the progress.

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